


Deadly Careful

by orphan_account



Category: The Borgias
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-03 21:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yep, an OC paired with Cesare. Predictable? Of course! But I had fun writing it, so I wanted to share. Let me know if you like it, but don't bother telling me I'm basically writing myself, because I already know that. ;) Not sure if I want to continue it.</p>
<p>Working on the basis of Cesare using a prostitute to spy on Cardinal Della Rovere. Yes, a total long shot since Della Rovere isn't portrayed as particularly lecherous, but this piece really isn't about politics, just some fluff.  Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Uno

Undeniably, it was large. That was how she knew she was poor: it was not that gold that garnished the walls, the silk resting in perfect half circles into a heavily canopied bed; it was the sheer size of these quarters that had her eyes round with infuriated disbelief. These self-indulgent, sinful people had night houses larger than her entire home as a child, and there was no reason for her to deny that it drew up her envy. 

She'd seen gold before. When she was a girl, no older than five, she'd nicked her first piece ever from the lodgings of a friar, and she'd become no less lucrative at the enterprise since then. Even now, however, almost fourteen years later, the memory made her snicker, a low tinkling tenor that bounced around the room before she turned to leave it. Enough of these silk pillows... Where was the wine?

Wine, she'd seen that too. A lot of it, and often, to the chagrin of a mother who had not the dignity left to lift a finger in rebuke, and in the familiar, delightful encouragement from her brothers. But this wine... It seemed to glitter in the torchlight as she poured herself a generous amount, as everything here seemed to glitter. She had little concern for being impertinently indulgent at this papal prince's expense.  
After all, she wasn't sure how long this little endeavor was actually going to last, at least before they decided to conveniently make her disappear or until... well actually, that was the only end she imagined they had planned for her at this point. What could this spoiled, self-serving, papist-loving young murderer want with her after she was done with the foolish cardinal? Neither of them was worth the spit her dogs slept in, but here she was stealing their money for services she'd give for free.

But she hadn't made it three years longer than any of her brothers to get pushed off by these Borgia pigs. There were two of them, were there not? And the girl, hair like spun gold... She'd heard only of the girl's beauty, but that was enough to cement her into the legend that was this Pope and his notorious family. Then again, how was one ever to tell how many bastards these modern popes would dare father? When the throne can be bought, what incentive was there to play by the rules? A question that had an answer she understood all too well. 

Perhaps a little too boldly, she found herself reclined next to His Imminence's bed, in a lavishly embroidered chair, her second glass almost finished in her now reddened, warm hands. Having spent most of the passing time contemplating just how horrible the upcoming meeting was to be, it was a rude awakening indeed to be awoken by the brightest flash of gold, and an immediate pain in her head for as beautiful as it was.

"Ohh," she groaned, barely able to lift her hand in time to cover her burning eyes. A slow, dark realization flooded through her, stomach first, as she took a deep breath of the incensed air and remembered where she'd fallen under.  
With a girlish gasp, she stood to face the monster she was expecting, her eyes flitting up to meet his inside a pouty, defiant, flushed face. It was not as she expected. The vivid gold she'd thought to be a dream threatened to swallow her again for the slightest moment before she saw his face clearly in the light. It was only his eyes she'd seen before, though she could now see they were a dark green. It must have been the torchlight dancing on the walls behind his head… His head full of thick brown curls, over a pointed nose and strong, bearded jaw.

It was not as she expected.

As she adjusted her expression, she looked down again, shyness searing into her as suddenly as sunlight into the corners of a dark room. This man was not wearing a monster's facade.

"I apologize, my lord," stammered a voice she was unfamiliar with. This was not the strength she'd hoped to show to this man! How defiant she'd felt, to stare into the eyes of the Assassin, as they called him, only to find nothing of what she expected when she did. "I--"

"Fell asleep. It is no crime, and the fault is mine. I did not expect my..." She tore her gaze from the curls falling to his brow line to look properly at his eyes, soaking up the pleasant hesitation issuing from his expression. His voice was so... 

"... Business, to keep me so late."

Unexpected.


	2. Due

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Two of my OC fluff experiment. Same silliness, expounded upon. :) Enjoy!

It didn't start making more sense later. Not in the least. She figured she'd get a pat on the bottom as she was handed off to some ruddy-faced, ale-aged pathetic excuse for a man of God. What came after, she had not wished to anticipate, and she didn’t imagine she was to receive comfort of any kind from these treasonous Spaniards.

She stared into the reflective glass and almost found herself pleased by the paint on her face, and the dark character that stared back in the twilight air. Her companion, Palma, untied another lock of her thick, dark hair, and it tickled her bare breast as it fell free of its restraints. But the smile was as swiftly snuffed out as her mood when she remembered for whom she wore her sheers, her paints, her curls. Her skin rippled again and she shivered remembering unsteady, clammy hands about her chest, a rasped breath warming her ear. She hoped to scrub her mind clean of that memory quickly, immediately if at all possible, though the tongue-tied cardinal was no so rough as he could have been.

And so now there was another thing that struck her ill at ease the further entwined she allowed herself to become, as she reflected on the evening behind her; To think that in the end, she was no worse than these Spanish thieves, willing to trade her body to the rich just to keep alive, to taste even the basest of the intrigue abundant within the walls of Pope Alexander’s Vatican. It wounded her sometimes foolishly solid self-assurance. 

Only, they were divinely rich (pun intended). Like foreign insects to the smell of a dying empire they succeeded, and were without a single redeemable moral in any of their persons; They slaughtered, whored, and paid for their respective thrones... Yes, her guilt never went unattended by her righteous anger for long. She wasn't so Godless as them, she pacified herself. They were greedy heathens. She was just surviving. She very secretly, very quietly, prayed God could see that.

Even the sound of the silks being dragged from her skin seemed shrill and nauseating. She just wanted to be left alone, she’d had enough of being touched and moved and prodded for one night. She was almost never alone anymore. Not since… she'd been sleeping across the courtyard from Cardinal Borgia. Living under his guard was a strange sort of sensation, like being too close to a fire, but being so perfectly warm, you forget to be afraid of the burn. She accounted most of the feeling to confusion, but there was an inexplicable sense of safety, something that startled her but intrigued her immeasurably. 

Who were these damned, amoral people? How could they he, the most baffling of the entirety of them, at once be so furtive and yet so steady, so…? Quiet but confidently and passionately certain? He was strange, but worst of all, was that she couldn’t get enough of how strange he was. How he never broke eye contact with her, no matter how much she blushed, or let her pass by him without speaking to her… Of course, that is, as long as they were alone.  
It only got more deliciously perplexing from there, the unmistakable inconsistency of his addresses to her, the way he seemed both uninterested in her person but acutely protective of her physical and personal wellness. He’d never let a day go by he didn’t have her attended to, cared for. 

The thought of it all tired her brain further still as Palma helped her into her chamber, and she could have melted in embarrassment realizing what she had just been imagining as the truth, in the deepest caverns of her imagination. It should have been clear all he cared about was his asset. The whore his assassin hand-picked for him. He cared not about this young woman, who was unfamiliar with the social politics of the nobility, who he’d pawned away into a game she did not know how to play. He had no stake in her life, nor she his, and she decided she’d do best to remember that. 

“Thank you,” she tittered at Palma, a gentle reminder that she would like to be by herself, finally. The woman nodded, and finally, Mathea sat down on her bed and begun to fold her hair into a braid, getting three rows in before giving up and stretching her sore body out under the soft blankets, and closing her eyes.

She blocked out the night behind her with ease due to just how tired she was, and let her body etch itself into the fresh linen. Within minutes, she was edging around sleep, her mind wandering without heed to the frustrations of her new life. In this godless palace, she would attempt to stay whole, stay alive, and thrive...  
Besides, how could she possibly worry when Cesare Borgia was speaking her name, she could hear him, could feel warm fingers tracing the length of her bare back… She sighed happily, and rolled over.

Once again, she could feel her eyes sting as if the sun were looking at her directly, and realized she must be waking to a new day. And someone (that same someone?) was still calling her name. She blinked her eyes open, trying desperately to banish sleep from her eyes, and looked out of her sheer bed curtains to see a head of brown curls peeking around into her chamber. She was happy to recall she could see more of him than he could of her, as only her sheets were covering her nakedness.

“My lord?” she simpered sleepily, her voice a shade of honey she only used for addressing him, and she wasn’t sure of its cause. Even so, a little sugar never hurt anything when you were speaking to the man providing you with meals. She pulled her sheets around her tighter, if only for the appearance of modesty, though she found herself slightly ablaze at the intensity of his searching stare. _Inspecting his investment_ , remember? She wiped the doe-eyed expression from her face, and averted her gaze elsewhere as he approached her bed, evidently to inspect her. He did not often speak to her about anything but business, and she took it as a reminder that she was not a person to him, only an object of his will by now.

But sometimes, he did. 

“You are bruised.” His distinctive tone was closer than she expected it to be, and she started a little, only to be further disoriented by a gentle hand cradling the back of her neck as a different set of fingers spread her legs gently to inspect a purple bruise on the inside of her thigh. 

“Yes…” she replied, the syrup gone from her voice, but she hoped at least her slight anguish could be hidden, her voice sturdy. She turned her face away from him and squeezed her eyes shut. It was to be expected, after all she might as well have been his property at this point, but she could not control the emotions that overwhelmed her at that moment, with his surprisingly soft fingers gently exploring her thighs, arms, and neck. It was humiliating and exhilarating, the two making no effort to blend themselves, to mold themselves together; One half of her wanted to scream and push his cold hands away from her skin and make him wish he’d never come to find her, and the other wished to pull him into the bed and kiss his perpetually pouted lips.

And suddenly, it’d stopped, and as soon as it had, she knew exactly which scenario she had truly craved. But there were no retreating footsteps, and her heart betrayed her once again, racing as she turned her head to face him.  
That was always the worst, actually being forced to look at him and have no choice but to concede that he was quite possibly one of the most fascinatingly beautiful men she’d ever laid eyes on. But what bothered her the most about it was that she could still not determine if he was truly beautiful, or if what she was beginning to feel for him that made him so. But just as the thought occurred to her, he did something he’d never done before, and her mind was made up: he pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, and left in what seemed like a hurry, but she was sure it was just the sound of her heartbeat in her ears that was making the room swim by in a warm rush.


End file.
